The development of the Yangtze River container port system

This paper sheds an empirical light on port development patterns by discussing the structure and the development of the Yangtze River ports system. We argue that the Yangtze River system is going through a regionalization phase, mainly in relation to the port of Shanghai. This process started on the lower Yangtze but is now also moving upstream. The transition towards the port regionalization phase is typically a gradual and market-driven process that mirrors the increased focus of market players on logistics integration. This paper builds on the existing literature on port systems and adapts port development models to river ports. Furthermore, we employ some statistical techniques that are common to the analysis of port systems, and introduce some techniques that have not been used much by transport geographers in ports. This paper will address the dynamics in the Yangtze River ports system by analyzing the level of cargo concentration and the degree of inequality in operations of the container ports. The paper also assesses observed differences in development of ports in different areas along the river (upstream/downstream) and reflects on the role of ownership structures in shaping regional load centre networks.     

Levels of internationalization in the container shipping industry: an assessment of the port networks of the large container shipping companies

This paper examines the internationalization level of the world’s largest container shipping companies by examining their port networks. The results of our analysis show that only three of the nineteen companies could be considered as being truly ‘International’ and service the ‘lion’s share’ of the major and minor ports distributed across the globe. The port networks of the other companies in our survey, whilst having individualized features, shared common characteristics. Guided by the ‘Uppsala Model of Incremental Internationalization’ (Johanson and Vahlne, 1977), we were able to identify four internationalization levels of a container shipping company that are indicated by their port network.We argue that the port network plays an additional role as it contributes to the internationalization level of the container shipping companies. This is important because the internationalization level affects the container shipping company’s ability to expand its customer base both at a local and international level. Local customers would have access to a larger international destination network and international customers would be able access a larger local distribution network without transhipping between different companies.Amongst other issues, we were able to determine that, for the analyzed container shipping companies, ‘Internationalization’ of a port network means including or excluding ports in specific regions or sub-regions in their own network, and that a company’s home base or history plays a significant role in this development.     

The dry port concept: connecting container seaports with the hinterland

The dry port concept is based on a seaport directly connected by rail with inland intermodal terminals where containers can be dealt with in the same way as if they were in a seaport. The main purpose of the article is to extend the theory behind the dry port concept and to define three dry port categories; distant, midrange and close. The findings show that the dry port concept can help identify ways of shifting freight volumes from road to more energy efficient traffic modes that are less harmful to the environment, relieve seaport cities from some congestion and facilitate improved logistics solutions for shippers in the port’s hinterland.     

The evolution of a regional container port system: the Pearl River Delta

This study investigates the progress of container port system development in South China, focusing particularly on the interplay between Hong Kong and the other ports in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region. After identifying the downgrading trend of Hong Kong from a transshipment hub port for Asia and for China as a whole to a regional load center and the emergence of other deep-sea direct-service ports, the paper looks into the causes of this structural change of the port system. Four major causes are identified: the cost-base competition, the impact of the unique “one-country two-systems” policy, the impact of globalization and container standardization, and the impact of multi-modal accessibility and connectivity. The paper reveals that the interplay between different governments and between the governments and port operators are the local mechanisms that together as a whole respond to the shippers’ needs and the shipping lines’ pressure. It confirms that the interdependencies and competitive relations between terminals are being played out at a regional level. While the particular situation of the PRD is unique in many regards, the features emerging there, with its dominant hub, its network of feeder ports and its emerging direct-service non-hub terminals, are being replicated elsewhere.     

A maritime container repositioning yield-based optimization model with uncertain upsurge demand

The role of container repositioning has become more important under the severe cargo shipping environment, affected by world trade growth, trade imbalance, slow steaming strategy and high container manufacturing cost. Low cost, better routing, and supplying equipment to higher yield cargo become the top criteria. A yield-based container repositioning framework is developed, followed by a constrained linear programming optimizing the container repositioning from surplus to deficit locations. The model incorporated change of destinations of empty containers and adjustment factors handling upsurge demand. The model is applied to optimize daily container repositioning operations with a better route, costs and equipment supply.     

Preliminary investigation of waterfront redevelopment in Chinese coastal port cities: the case of the eastern Dalian port areas

Since the turn of the millennium, waterfront redevelopment has been a new phenomenon in the coastal port cities of China and has become an important component of a global wave. In the context of urbanisation and globalisation, waterfront redevelopment provides not only various opportunities but also unprecedented challenges for the Chinese port cities. From a sustainability perspective, addressing the challenges requires thoroughly analysing the factors driving waterfront redevelopment and discovering the issues facing those coastal port cities. After reviewing the historical process of port development, based on the case of the eastern Dalian port areas, this paper attempts to explore the key factors behind the redevelopment and to discover the main issues facing Dalian cityport. The results show that forces at the global, national and local levels jointly drive redevelopment activities and that some national factors, such as aggressive real estate development in the past decade, play a remarkable role in this phenomenon. Consequently, timing on redevelopment, historic building conservation, reconnection of the waterfront to the city, and building a democratic decision-making process together challenge the sustainable future of redeveloped waterfronts in Dalian cityport and in other historic port cities in China.     

Street centrality and land use intensity in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

This paper examines the relationship between street centrality and land use intensity in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Street centrality is calibrated in terms of a node’s closeness, betweenness and straightness on the road network. Land use intensity is measured by population (residential) and employment (business) densities in census tracts, respectively and combined. Two GIS-based methods are used to transform data sets of centrality (at network nodes) and densities (in census tracts) to one unit for correlation analysis. The kernel density estimation (KDE) converts both measures to raster pixels, and the floating catchment area (FCA) method computes average centrality values around census tracts. Results indicate that population and employment densities are highly correlated with street centrality values. Among the three centrality indices, closeness exhibits the highest correlation with land use densities, straightness the next and betweenness the last. This confirms that street centrality captures location advantage in a city and plays a crucial role in shaping the intraurban variation of land use intensity.     

Dynamics of liner shipping network and port connectivity in supply chain systems: analysis on East Asia

The study of ports in supply chain systems is an emerging area of importance which has drawn more attention from researchers in recent years. This paper presents a new perspective in this research area by examining the calling patterns of container shipping services in order to understand the dynamics of port connectivity and inter-port relationships in the supply chains. Empirical evidence is drawn from four major ports in East Asia, namely Shanghai, Busan, Kaohsiung and Ningbo. The study identifies the shipping capacity, trade routes and geographical regions connected to the ports, shipping lines involved, and the extensity and intensity of inter-port relationships among the four container ports from liner shipping network’s perspective. The findings show that most of the shipping capacity employed on the major east–west trade routes became non-exclusive and involved calls at two or more of the four ports. Port planners, terminal operators and carriers could capitalise on opportunities through exploitation of complementary relationships that exist among the selected ports, such as offering a package for shipping lines to call at a portfolio of terminals owned by the same terminal operator. Policy and research implications as well as recommendations are discussed for various stakeholders concerned with port planning and regional development.     

The waves of containerization: shifts in global maritime transportation

This paper provides evidence of the cyclic behavior of containerization through an analysis of the phases of a Kondratieff wave (K-wave) of global container ports development. The container, like any technical innovation, has a functional (within transport chains) and geographical diffusion potential where a phase of maturity is eventually reached. Evidence from the global container port system suggests five main successive waves of containerization with a shift of the momentum from advanced economies to developing economies, but also within specific regions. These waves are illustrative of major macroeconomic, technological and sometimes political shifts within the global economy. They do not explain the causes, but simply the consequences in the distribution in container traffic and growth (or decline). Yet, they provide strong evidence that containerization has a cyclic behavior and that inflection points are eventually reached, marking the end of the diffusion of containerization in a specific port or port range. Future expectations about the growth of containerization thus need to be assessed within an economic cycle perspective instead of the rather linear perspectives.     

Patterns of maritime supply chains: slot capacity analysis

This paper offers a tool for analysing patterns of maritime supply chains. The study uses empirical data on slot capacity deployed by container shipping lines for analysing ports (as nodes) and routes and shipping lines (as links) that are embedded within the maritime supply chain. The ports of Singapore and Hong Kong are chosen to illustrate the respective transhipment and gateway perspectives. Findings reveal that geographical location and changes in the constitution of players can have reverberations on the maritime supply chain dynamics that traverse the port. Furthermore, evidence from trade route data also shows that maritime supply chain dynamics associated with transhipment and gateway ports could be governed by different levels of scope economies, demand complementarity and market power. The paper illustrates the abundant potential of slot capacity analysis for academic and industry/market research. Thus, future research can be pursued in various contexts and for different applications.     

Going West? Spatial polarization of the North Korean port system

This paper analyzes North Korean ports in light of existing models of port system evolution. It reviews the economic and political factors shaping port concentration in developed, developing, and socialist countries. A database on vessel movements allows for the analysis of individual North Korean port traffic by total capacity circulated, cargo type, fleet nationality, immediate origin and destination, and berthing time. While ideological factors and military control hamper port modernization and trade openness, traffic concentration at the Pyongyang–Nampo gateway highlights the spatial polarization in the capital region at the expense of Eastern ports for which inland transport limitations and industrial decline have become major issues. The North Korean case only partly fits general models because traffic concentration occurs due to geopolitical isolation and internal limitations rather than economic and trade growth.     

Network analysis of container barge transport in the port of Antwerp by means of simulation

Inland navigation plays an important role in the hinterland access of the port of Antwerp. In this paper alternative bundling strategies for container barge transport in the port of Antwerp are analyzed. Four alternative hub scenarios are simulated and compared with the current situation with respect to the operational characteristics of the network. Discrete event simulation is used to analyze the impact on waiting times and capacity utilization at potential hubs and at sea terminals. The hub scenarios under investigation are the organization of an intermodal barge hub on the right river bank, an intermodal hub on the left river bank, a first multihub scenario with a local collection/distribution network and a potentially improved multihub scenario taking into account the specific structure of the port of Antwerp. The second multihub scenario offers most opportunities for reducing the turnaround time of all inland terminals. All hub scenarios lead to important efficiency improvements in the handling of barges at sea terminals.     

Optimal placement of multiple types of detectors under a small vessel attack threat to port security

We focus on a threat scenario where a terrorist would utilize a small vessel to attack a maritime target. We consider how to place multiple types of detectors to protect maritime targets from such an attack. Detectors are not perfectly reliable. The resulting detector placement problem is formulated as a nonlinear binary integer program such that the expected damage cost caused by the small vessel attack is minimized. Two exact algorithms and a greedy adding heuristic are proposed. Moreover, we conduct a detailed computational study and provide a case study in New York Harbor.     

Service charge and capacity selection of an inland river port with location-dependent shipping cost and service congestion

The inland waterway transportation has attracted a lot of attention worldwide in the last fifteen years. This paper studies the location, service charge and capacity decision of an inland river port to maximize its revenue or profit. The cargo shippers are assumed to be uniformly distributed along the inland river and can be shipped to the junction port via pure road transportation service or transshipment service with the inland river port. The natural heterogeneity of the river’ navigational condition is modeled by a location-dependent waterway transportation cost and the service congestion on the port is captured by the M/M/1 queueing model. We analytically investigate the properties of the optimal solutions for various decision problems associated with the inland river port. The effects of the natural heterogeneity and port service congestion of those optimal solutions are investigated. Those theoretical results are carefully examined in the case study of the Yangtze River.     

Opportunities to improve container barge handling in the port of Rotterdam from a transport network perspective

This paper presents and evaluates an opportunity to improve the competitiveness of container barge transport in the hinterland of Rotterdam through a reorganization of container barge services. This reorganization improves the handling of barges in the port and consists of splitting existing services into a trunk line operation in the hinterland and collection/distribution operations in the seaport. A marginal cost model is used to demonstrate the potential net benefits of these revised services. The main conclusion is that these split services can improve the competitiveness of barge hinterland transport, but the effectiveness depends on several conditions. These conditions are first of all related to the design and organization of collection and distribution transport, but also to the characteristics of the trunk line operation in the hinterland.     

An analysis of the determinants of cruise traffic: An empirical application to the Spanish port system

We study the determinants that affect the capacity of ports to attract cruise ships in Spain. The conclusion is that the likelihood of having cruise traffic is linked to ports located in populous areas and close to large airports, ports not specialized in container traffic but sharing facilities with ferries traffic and ports having a minimum depth of water. The amount of cruise traffic that a port can generate is also related to the population and the air connections, along with the tourist appeal and the facilities shared with other types of port traffic, namely roll-on roll-off and ferries.     

Co-evolution of the strategic reorientation of port actors: insights from the Port of Rotterdam and the Port of Barcelona

This paper explores changes in the strategic orientation of port authorities and terminal operators towards the hinterland network in the Ports of Rotterdam and Barcelona. Port authorities and terminal operators are economically, institutionally and geographically related organizations. The argument here is that such organizations experience a mutually influential and interactive effect in their strategy over time. The research explores the evolution of the market, institutional and governance forces behind these organizations’ strategic orientation, while acknowledging their interdependence and interrelationship. To that end, it builds a conceptual framework analysing these organizations’ strategies in different points in time. It draws upon firms and port theories to design a co-evolutionary framework, which is later refined with insights gained from an empirical study of the port context.     

Measuring the perceived container leasing prices in liner shipping network design with empty container repositioning

This paper aims to measure the perceived container leasing prices at different ports by presenting a two-stage optimization method. In stage I, we propose a practical liner shipping network design problem with empty container repositioning. The proposed problem further considers the use of foldable containers and allows the mutual substitution between empty containers to decrease the number of empty containers to be repositioned. In stage II, the inverse optimization technique is used to determine the perceived container leasing prices at different ports, based on the solution obtained in stage I. Based on a set of candidate liner shipping service routes, a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model is built for the proposed problem in stage I. The nonlinear terms are linearized by introducing the auxiliary variables. Numerical experiments based on a realistic Asia-Europe-Oceania liner shipping network are carried out to account for the effectiveness of our two-stage optimization method.     

Concentration and the formation of multi-port gateway regions in the European container port system: an update

The European container port system features a unique blend of different port types and sizes combined with a vast economic hinterland. This paper provides an update of the detailed container traffic analysis developed by Notteboom (1997) by extending it to the period 1985–2008 and to 78 container ports. The paper also aims at identifying key trends and issues underlying recent developments in the European container port system. These trends include the formation of multi-port gateway regions, changes in the hinterland orientation of ports and port regionalization processes. While the local hinterland remains the backbone of ports’ traffic positions, a growing demand for routing flexibility fuels competition for distant hinterlands between multi-port gateway regions. The prevailing assumption that containerisation would lead to further port concentration is not a confirmed fact in Europe: the European port system and most of its multi-port gateway regions witness a gradual cargo deconcentration process. Still, the container handling market remains far more concentrated than other cargo handling segments in the European port system, as there are strong market-related factors supporting a relatively high cargo concentration level in the container sector.